[joho] JOHO - May 30, 2008

From: "David Weinberger" <self@xxxxxxxxxxx>

To: joho@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2008 12:59:50 -0400

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May 30, 2008
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Contents
*How much do we have to care
about?*<file:///Users/davidmac2/Documents/_internet/joho/may3%2008/joho-may30-08.html#care>Even
if the mainstream media's coverage of most of the world didn't suck,
would we care? Are we capable of caring sufficiently? (Annotated by Ethan
Zuckerman!)
Vint Cerf's
curiosity<file:///Users/davidmac2/Documents/_internet/joho/may3%2008/joho-may30-08.html#cerf>:
If we are indeed getting more of a stomach for the complex, what role has
our technology played?
History's
wavefront<file:///Users/davidmac2/Documents/_internet/joho/may3%2008/joho-may30-08.html#history>
: When we can record just about everything, history loses its past. And, no,
I don't know what I mean by that.
ROFLcon and
Woodstock<file:///Users/davidmac2/Documents/_internet/joho/may3%2008/joho-may30-08.html#roflcon>:
Am I so enthusiastic about the ROFLcon conference because it was important
or because I'm out of touch? (Choose as many as apply.)
Is the Web
different?<file:///Users/davidmac2/Documents/_internet/joho/may3%2008/joho-may30-08.html#webdiff>
The
definitive and final answer.
The Turing
Tests<file:///Users/davidmac2/Documents/_internet/joho/may3%2008/joho-may30-08.html#turing>:
Throwback humor, in both senses.
Bogus
Contest<file:///Users/davidmac2/Documents/_internet/joho/may3%2008/joho-may30-08.html#bogus>:
Surely anagrams can't be random!
Attention!
I have no idea why, but this issue seems dominated by questions of
attention. That seems odd to me because for thirty years I've thought I
should pay attention to attention, but I've never gotten around to it and
probably never will. Oh well.
What were we talking about?
Cover gone soft?
The paperback version of Everything Is
Miscellaneous<http://www.eimisc.com/>is out. Yay.
Times Books changed the cover from a shiny, metallico-techie
blue<http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/ff/5d/3150eb6709a0816b58a52110.L.jpg>(gorgeous
in its own way) to what I think is a more
inviting, wistful
photo<http://hbpub.vo.llnwd.net/o16/jackets/Tilted/9780805088113.jpg>of
a dandelion being disaggregated. But, asking me about book covers is
like
asking me about our children's haircuts. I am incapable of the multi-vision
needed to assess them.
[image: dividing line]
How much do we have to care about?
I had trouble writing this piece. I couldn't — and haven't — gotten it
right. So, I showed it to Ethan Zuckerman, who commented on it generously
and extensively. (He's recovering from eye surgery, which makes me all the
more grateful to him.) I have included his comments, boxed in green.Thank
you, Ethan. And get better soon.
[In many mail clients, including Gmail, some of the formatting is lost. For
example this text should be against a green background and the headline of
this article should be red. You can see Joho in its intended glory
here<http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-may30-08.html>.]
1.
The population of Nigeria roughly equals the population of Japan. Yet, the
amount of space given to Nigeria by the US news media makes it about the
size of Britney Spears' left pinky toe. Why?
Serious researchers have been considering this question for generations. Do
American newspaper editors skimp on Nigeria because they're racists? Nah, at
least not in the straightforward way. Is it because the readers don't care
about Nigeria? Somewhat. But how will we ever care if we never read anything
about it? We seem to be stuck in vicious circle, or what's worse, a circle
of not-caring.
You might add something about why this "circle of not-caring" matters. My
stock examples for this are the genocide in Rwanda, and terrorist training
camps in central Asia. We don't care about these places until it's too late…
[Note: Insertions in green are Ethan Zuckerman's comments on a draft of this
article - DW]
I have greatly enjoyed watching my friend Ethan
Zuckerman<http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ethan/>grapple with this issue.
Ethan's heart is as big as his brain, which is as
big as any I've ever met. His question is: How can we get past our homophily
— the love of that which is like us — to get to xenophilia, which is Ethan's
term for the love of that which is different. How can we change the media
agenda?
Ethan is a co-founder of Global Voices <http://www.globalvoicesonline.com/>.
(Disclosure: I am on the board of advisers.) GV has editors around the world
who post what's new on the blogs in their countries. GV aims at making it
easy for US readers to find the world around them. It also surfaces stories
and sources for the mainstream media. GV requires a lot of work by a lot of
people, and it is a magnificent site. But GV "only" gets 350,000 unique
visitors a month, so Ethan is disappointed. It hasn't changed the world yet.
I'm sorry to say that I think Ethan is destined to be disappointed. I'm
happier to say that he shouldn't be.
2.
I have a friend who once heard me apologizing for not remembering someone's
name by saying, "My memory for names is terrible." Pish-tosh, said my
friend. No one remembers names. (Exception: Bill Clinton, I'm told.) We
ought to stop apologizing for it. Likewise, we're never going to care as
much or as fairly as we should. If we learn that Nigeria's capital is Abjua,
that its current president is Umaru Yar'Adua, and that in western Nigeria
many people are adhere to Yorubo/Irunmole spirituality with its philosophy
of divine destiny that all can become Orisha [thank you,
Wikipedia<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigeria>!],
do we have to master the same set of basic facts for the 200-odd countries
in the world? How about for the countless ethnic communities? Provinces?
Cities? Towns? Neighborhoods? All lives are important to at least one
person, and undoubtedly could be interesting to many more. Where is our
caring permitted to stop?
Make sure you watch this video
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwom49awRKg. Wonderful
gratuitous recitation of facts in much the same way you just did. [It's The
Onion. It's hilarious — DW.]
Certainly, reason should extend our care to everyone we recognize as a
fellow creature that cares about its existence. But reasoned caring is a
theoretical caring. We love our families more than we love our neighbors,
and we love our neighbors more than we love those clowns over in
Shelbyville. We can, of course, be touched by anyone, anywhere, but for that
to happen, we have to be touched. Otherwise, the touch is theoretical,
potential.
Those two paragraphs basically outline Kwame Appiah's book,
"Cosmopolitanism" – more to the point, they outline the first half of the
book,which is the brilliant half. Appiah, a brilliant Ghanaian-American
philosopher based at Princeton, observes that this opportunity to care
about fellow creatures in far-flung parts of the world is very, very new.
Two hundred years ago, only the most learned city-dwellers would regularly
interact with people of other "tribes". Eight hundred years ago, meeting
people from other cultures made Marco Polo, well, Marco Polo. This idea that
we might need to care about all of humanity – or at least tolerate them in
our interactions – is brand new, and starkly conflicts with basic human
impulses – care for our family and tribe and fear the outsider.
The book that I'm trying to write starts by explaining this observation of
Appiah's, explaining how homophily is part of the psychological wiring
we all have as tribal beings. It goes on to make the argument that
while homophily works great within closed societies, it's basically a major
handicap in a globalized world. It's this second point that I think you
may need to emphasize in this piece – right now, you're making only the
guilt argument, not the economic argument, the fear argument or the
xenophile argument… (And then the book goes on to explain how xenophiles
will conquer the world, how to become one, and why you're basically screwed
in 2050 if you didn't grow up bi or tri-cultural… and why buying ten copies
of the book right now will solve all your problems.)
If the capacity to be touched by those at an enormous distance is
distinctive of our species, then our inability to be touched by all equally
is our fallen state. Caring beyond reason about those we don't know is
destined to remain an exceptional condition.
I think the word "exceptional" is especially well-chosen. What was so
exceptional about Nelson Mandela wasn't that he was an amazing and vocal
leader for black South Africans – it was that he showed compassion and
understanding for white South Africans, including deKlerk. Figures who can
care across borders are heroes in a very particular and recognizable
fashion. The challenge for those of us living in a global world is to figure
out how to emulate this laudable characteristic.
3.
But Ethan is not arguing that newspapers ought to cover every village and
every family. Rather, our newspapers should equally cover places that are of
equal significance, or at least not be so blatantly out of balance.
Nigeria's population is as big as Japan's, and while its economy is not on a
par with Japan's, it's of growing importance to us. So, why the disparity?
And, more important, how do we remedy it?
It's a bit more than that. Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa.
If it's not at peace, the continent's not at peace. It's the US's fourth
largest provider of oil, and it's increasingly economically important as a
result. It's got a balance between Christian and Muslim populations, which
basically makes it a central battleground between religions on
the continent. So there are good, real reasons to care about it.
What is the cause of that which we are trying to remedy? Why do Americans
(generally) care more about Japan than about Nigeria? For a few reasons, all
obvious. Japan's economy affects us more directly. We fought Japan and thus
learned more about it. And, it's got ninjas.
Nigeria needs ninjas.
When I present this situation, I often do it this way: "Of course, we care
more about Japan than Nigeria – we've got so much more in common culturally.
A common language, a common religion… wait, that's Nigeria that's Christian
and English speaking." So the next time I do it on stage, I'm going to use
that as a segue into "The Ninja Gap"
No, I'm not kidding. One reason we care about Japan more than Nigeria
(generally) is that Japan has a cool culture. We've heard about that culture
because some Westerners wrote bestselling books about ninjas, and then
Hollywood made ninja movies. Love them ninjas! Nigeria undoubtedly has
something as cool as ninjas. Ok, something almost as cool as ninjas. If we
had some blockblusters about the Nigerian equivalent of ninjas, we'd start
to be interested Nigeria.
The Ninja gap is completely accurate, and you've phrased it in a way that's
so elegant, I'm going to be forced to steal it. Here's why: what we know
about other people is heavily mediated. Very few of us have the opportunity
to get on a plane and meet Nigerians. So instead, we meet Nigerians in a
mediated form – through news reports, Hollywood movies and spam email. Part
of the reason India is rising as an influence in much of the world –
disproportional to their economic power – is the fact that they're such a
powerful cultural exporter (via Bollywood.) And a major part of the US's
hyperpower status is our entertainment industry…
4.
I know that sounds cynical, as if we're so shallow that we need guys with
throwing stars and gymnastic skills to get us to pay attention. And, yes, I
suppose picking ninjas as an example does suggest that we need to be
entertained in order to care. But, there is a serious dilemma here.
1.
Everyone is deserving of our care.
2.
Everything is potentially interesting.
3.
We can't care about everything and everyone, except abstractly.
4.
What we find actually interesting is not much under our control.
5.
Our interest is determined not by what we should be interested in but by
what we happen to be interested in.
Yes and no. I'm not trying to challenge people to care about everyone,
everywhere. That's beyond human capacity – someone who can truly understand
the complexity, beauty and suffering of the world is a bodhisattva, not an
ordinary human. The challenge I'm trying to put forward is not quite as
dramatic – it's to get people to care enough that they can pay attention to
the parts of the world that need watching. These change constantly, and
fluidly. But the purpose of news media is to do this watching for us.
Unfortunately, media is badly broken, and tends to badly underestimate the
importance of news in certain parts of the world (and badly overvalue other
parts, most notably Israel and its neighbors.) We help correct news media by
paying attention more broadly… but not infinitely broadly.
Mediation is important here. What we find interesting is a product both of
what we gravitate to (homophily), what's promoted by market-driven media,
and how that media is framed. It's pretty freaking challenging to develop a
real passion for Mongolia based on an Economist article. But see "The
Weeping Camel <http://www.nationalgeographic.com/weepingcamel/>", and
there's a possibility that you'll connect with the narrative.
From this comes some unwanted conclusions:
Inevitably, our interests will do injustice to the world. But we can do
better or worse, be more homophilic or more xenophilicm to use Ethan's
words.
And here I think you need to say why. Xenophilia is a competitive advantage
in a globalized world. Xenophilia is also a defensive stance in a world
where threats – economic and security – come from places we've never paid
attention to. And xenophilia promises that we might discover something as
cool as Nigerian ninjas, which is a motivator in and of itself.
Simply presenting us with information will not direct our interest. We
already have access to more information than ever, but our interests are
still out of proportion. Thus, if newspapers or their online replacements
become more proportionally accurate reflections of the world, we'll just
skip the sections we don't care about. That's what we do already: Everything
you ever wanted to know about Nigeria is online, but you haven't read hardly
any of it, have you? Me neither.
90% right. This is the supply and demand problem. Historically, paying
attention to the developing world has been a supply problem – now it's
turning into a demand problem. But the supply problem still applies. This is
standard digital divide stuff, which I covered in Making Room for the Third
World <http://www.extremedemocracy.com/chapters/Chapter13-Zuckerman.pdf> in
the Second
Superpower<http://www.extremedemocracy.com/chapters/Chapter13-Zuckerman.pdf>.
Until we've got lots of Nigerian wikipedians, that resource is going to be a
little skewed.
So, if our aim is to increase our xenophilia, and to get us to know and care
more about the rest of the world, we need more that will hook our interest.
Where I come from, that's known as "good writing" (or good podcasting, or
good video). Good writing can make anything interesting. We will read the
story about the Nigerian peddler and his neighborhood if there is a writer
able to tell that story in a compelling way.
In other words, the solution to caring about Nigeria might be Chinua Achebe,
who's now taught in many high schools. Or Chris Abani, who is probably the
best intro to Nigerian literature today. [I don't know. Do they write about
ninjas? - DW]
Maybe one conclusion to draw is that good writing is harder than we thought.
Or maybe there is more good writing around than we think, but we need help
finding it. We're not going to seek it out because we're not yet interested
in it. Maybe if Global Voices were more like BoingBoing — a site that
surfaces innately interesting stories, rather than a site that tries to
cover a domain — more of us would go to it. Or, more exactly, perhaps we
need an additional site — GlobalBoings? — since GV serves an invaluable
purpose.
Or, perhaps someone will have a better idea.
Please.
5.
As is so often the case, the question isn't whether the Web has solved a
problem but whether it's helped.
The news media are not making noticeable progress in covering the world more
equitably.
It's worse than that. Coverage of international news in nightly newscasts
dropped sharply from 1980 to 2000. While it's up at present, it's
hyperfocused on US military adventures abroad.
Their agenda is unchanged. But on the Web there are multiple, overlapping
personal and social agendas. Which results in there not being an agenda.
There is thus no one putting broccoli on our plates and telling us to eat
it.
...much as newspaper editors and TV news anchors, at their best, have
traditionally done for us. ----
Doesn't matter. Our interest just won't go where it doesn't want to. We need
more of the world to be made interesting for us. That's a job not just for —
or even mainly for — media. Making the world interesting, arousing our
curiosity, is first of all the job of education.
But we can't wait for the educational system to catch up. Fortunately,
we have a do-it-yourself infrastructure well designed for sharing our
enthusiasms. Now we need to fill the world with stories, flood the tubes
with our recommendations and commentary, and resign ourselves to never being
able to get to it all.
We will have succeeded if we feel as overwhelmed as explorers on foot in a
new world, for that's exactly what we are, even though the new world is one
that was there all along.
[image: dividing line]
Vint Cerf's curiosity
[*A version of this will run as my next column in
KMWorld<http://www.kmworld.com/>
.*]
Vint Cerf <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vint_Cerf> is generally called the
father of the Internet. He was in the group that connected the first two
nodes of ARPANet, and was one of the designers of the TCP/IP protocol. And
that was just the beginning. So, the appellation is well-deserved. We are
lucky to have had a person of such caliber at the founding, for like Tim
Berners Lee and many others who have given us so much, Cerf's public
impulses have consistently been selfless and generous.
Esquire magazine recently ran an
interview<http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/vint-cerf-0508>with
him that they busted up into a series of unrelated quotations. I was
particularly struck by one little insight:
"The closer you look at something, the more complex it seems to be."
Because of Esquire's disaggregation of the interview, we have to guess at
Cerf's tone of voice. My guess is that he said this with a sense of wonder
and delight, not out of frustration. Of course, I may be reading Cerf's mind
inaccurately. But the plausibility of that reading is itself significant: It
seems reasonable that a mind like Cerf's delights in the bottomless
complexity of the world.
This is not such a weird idea these days. But it does fly in the face of one
of Western culture's founding thoughts. Ever since the Greeks, we've assumed
that knowing something means seeing beneath its complex, ever-shifting
surface to the shimmering simplicity underneath it. For the Greeks — and for
us, for thousands of years since — we've assumed the world's complexity is
an appearance to be penetrated. The world's truth (we've assumed) is simple,
orderly, and beautiful. And most of all (we've assumed), it's knowable. If
beneath the ever-changing river, famously analogized by Heraclitus in the
fourth century BCE, there weren't a simple principle, then there wouldn't be
anything to know. We've assumed.
With the development of Complexity Theory, we are able to find a different
type of simplicity beneath the apparent chaos, for we now know that hugely
complex events can be generated by extremely simple rules, but I doubt Cerf
was thinking about the path of smoke, the architectural wonder of termite
nests, or the other standard examples of Complexity Theory. I think Cerf was
pointing us to the endless layers of detail and intricacy of our world, a
source of joy and even transcendence.
Especially since this thought may be on the mind of the Father of the
Internet, we should ask about the role our new technology has played in our
change of attitude.
First, computers, and then networked computers, and then ubiquitous
networked computers, provide the mental "scaffolding" for us to deal with
complexity, to use Andy Clark's term from his book "Being
There<http://books.google.com/books?id=i03NKy0ml1gC&dq>."
Clark's point is that, in a very real sense, thinking is done out in the
world, using external aids that extend our ability to remember and think.
Our paltry brains just aren't big enough. So, when parchment was expensive
and few people knew how to write, our capacity for knowledge was highly
constrained. That capacity went up significantly with the printing press,
and has gone up exponentially with the Internet. Any one of us plus Google
knows way more than the smartest of us did fifty years ago. We're not
necessarily smarter, much less wiser, but we certainly know more. The
presence of computers has enabled us to embrace the complexity of the world,
rather than to flee from it as the enemy of knowing.
Second, our previous externalizations of knowledge have generally introduced
boundaries. Books keep ideas apart simply because they put ideas between
covers. Libraries keep books apart simply because the real world forces
binary decisions: This book can be near those others, but necessarily will
be at increasing distances from the rest of them. Aristotle enshrined this
in laws of thought and nature: A is A, and A is not not-A. Simplicity for
the Greeks was baked into the very nature of existence. But the Web's
architecture is based on links. Links connect, not divide. The Web is
healing the rifts the real world forced into our ideas.
Third, the Internet connects not just ideas, but people. We are thus able
simultaneously to distribute the task of knowing our world, and loosely
integrating what we know. That integration happens formally through links
but informally — and wildly messily — through the sociality of the Web. Not
only do we have experts of every stripe examining, well, every stripe, but
those experts are in passionate conversation with one another, across time,
difference, and culture. It's not enough, of course. We tend to talk too
much with those who are like us and not enough with those who are different,
and this itself masks some of the deepest complexities. But it is better
than anyone could have imagined. And it will never be enough. The world is
too complex for that.
Out of this complex swirl of complexity, a corollary to Cerf's observation
is obvious. Not only is the world endlessly complex, it is also endlessly
interesting. Indeed, that is one of the lessons taught by the technology
Cerf was instrumental in giving us: Everything is interesting if looked at
in sufficient detail.
That in itself is a bottomless gift.
[image: dividing line]
History's wavefront
I hate pieces like this. They sound all grand, but in fact they're just not
well thought enough. So why run it? Because I think there's an idea in it,
or around it, or standing on the side making fun of it. Let me know if you
figure out what it is.
The Strand Bookstore <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strand_Bookstore> in NYC
has eighteen miles of books, which works out to about 2.5
million<http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/10great/2003-09-29-books_x.htm?loc=interstitialskip>volumes.
My excellent
local library <http://www.brooklinelibrary.org/about/statistics> has
409,000. The Strand's shelves press the shoppers together, giving a sense
that the place is alive with the love of books. The library is quieter
because emptier. Even so, the library has something the Strand does not:
history.
We've assumed that knowledge was always there, just waiting to be known. To
know something is to uncover that it has a past. Wind always had oxygen in
it. How about that! We recently discovered that it had been true all along
that birds descended from dinosaurs. Amazing! Knowledge and the past go
together like a horse and the horse before we found it.
The past is not history, of course. History is the way the past makes sense
to us. Likewise, knowledge isn't every little fact that's happened in the
course of every life. If it were, it wouldn't be knowable, and what is
knowledge if it can't be known? Knowledge and history both result from
curation.
We're never all going to agree about exactly which books should be housed in
a library, which ones should be ignored, and which ones ought to be put into
the "Take one! They're free!" box at the town picnic. But, the very fact
that there's a reasonable way to fill a library with books tells us that
knowledge is possible. The stability of that knowledge — the relative
persistence and constancy of the collection — gives knowledge a history and
tells us that the past can be more than the plenum of all that's occurred.
The past can be — is — history because it fits into books that fit into a
library. Then the past moves on, but the books that record our knowledge of
it remain, can be identified, can be collected, can be learned, can be
known. Libraries enable history.
There's plenty of knowledge and history on the Internet, but it looks
different. Blogs and Twitter and email and all the rest record more than any
history or library could accommodate. It's recorded, but there's no room we
can walk into and say, "Here is what we know. Doesn't it smell great?"
Lacking artifacts with the persistence of atoms to stand still as time
moves, knowledge is unmoored from history. We know more than ever thanks to
the Web, but that knowledge is now a wavefront that at any one moment
contains every memory, every trace. What gets dropped from the front of the
wave often leaves no residue.
We're carrying history forward, like an contact list that contains the names
of everyone we ever met. History is still with us. It just has no past.
[image: dividing line]
ROFLcon and Woodstock
I was at Woodstock. For two hours. I was supposed to meet a girl there.
Hahaha. Instead, I wandered around, hoping someone would offer me something
to smoke to get me through the
Melanie<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Safka>performance. So,
let me recap: I was at Woodstock, didn't meetup with the
girl I was infatuated with, didn't get stoned, and heard Melanie. Also, it
was raining. Still, I was at Woodstock, which used to give me street cred,
but now just makes me a fogey.
But forget my personal experience and take Woodstock as a watershed event at
which the young realized they were more than just a demographic slice. We
might ebven be a movement. ROFLcon <http://roflcon.org/> felt something like
that. To me. But, I can't tell if that's only because I'm old. Not John
McCain old, but embarrass-the-kids-when-I-moonwalk old.
And jeez were there a lot of kids there. The event sold out quickly, and
apparently to no one over 23. It was a side of Internet culture I just don't
see, i.e., the side that is the Internet. I hadn't actually heard of Leeroy
Jenkins <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeroy_Jenkins> or Dinosaur
Comics<http://www.qwantz.com/>,
and had heard of but spent no time with 4chan <http://www.4chan.org/> or
xkcd <http://xkcd.com/>. I had to seek out a friendly 23 year old to ask
"What's up with those
folks<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_%28group%29>in the Guy
Fawkes masks?" I had sort of heard of Marmaduke
Explained <http://marmadukeexplained.blogspot.com/>, but didn't fully
appreciate it, and I didn't know that
this<http://4q.cc/index.php?pid=top100&person=chuck>is the real and
original Chuck Norris site, whereas
this <http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/> is a bowdlerized one put up by the
evil Chuckster himself. (The ungrateful, humor-deprived,
infommercial-dependent lunkhead is
suing<http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUSN2129580420071222>the
kid who put up the original site.) But the people behind each of these
folks were received as celebrities. Which makes sense, since they are
celebrities.
Of course, their celebrity is different than celebrity used to be. They are
more of us than old world celebrities are. We are rejoicing in getting to
make our own celebrities, rather than having to accept the Ryan Seacrests
and Britney Seecrests. If the new cartoonists can only draw stick figures,
we're ok with that, so long as the verbal content speaks to us. And we'll
happily make our own stream of LOLcats
<http://icanhascheezburger.com/>comics (or even a LOLcat
Bible <http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Main_Page>) without
insisting that there be a centralized LOLcat authority. (Imagine
crowdsourcing the writing of The Lockhorns or Dennis the Menace. Or Family
Circus. Oh, lord, let's please crowdsource Family Circus.)
Anyway, I'm not sure if ROFLcon was as defining for the attendees as it was
for me as an alien observer.
But it sure was a groovy trip, man.
------------------------------
You can see a condensed version of my opening talk, on Web fame,
here<http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog/rb_08_may_01>.
Or, you can see the whole thing
here<http://www.archive.org/details/RespectablyFrench.ROFLCon.OpeningKeynote>.
(Part 1 is an interview with the Tron guy. My keynote is in part 2.)
[image: dividing line]
Is the Web different?
I taught a course this past semester for the first time in 22 years. The
course was called "The Web
Difference<http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/webdifference/>,"
which was apt since it was about whether the Web is actually much
different<http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-feb04-08.html#different>from
what came before it, with an emphasis on what that might mean for law
and policy.
And the answer is...
During the final class session, I took a survey: On a scale from 1-10, with
ten being the max, how different do you think the Web is? Students were
allowed to consider likely effects 5-10 years from now. The average among
the 25 students: 8.4.
Question settled. Next!
Teaching again
People say that stepping back into the classroom is like getting on a bike
again. It all just comes back to you. Well, sort of, except it's more like
getting on a bike while wearing the same spandex suit you wore 22 years ago.
It's just not the same, and not always pretty.
It was much harder than I'd hoped, although ultimately I think it went well.
Before the class began, I was worried that the students would know more than
I do. Oh, sure, there's a yada yada and blah blah blah about how that's a
good thing, but, well, it's scary. But, it turned out that these students —
intimidatingly bright Harvard Law students — and I know different things.
Whew.
Still, I remember it being easier.
For one thing, when I was teaching philosophy to undergrads a long time ago,
we often spent class time going over reading that was difficult for them.
So, we would work our way through the a few pages of Locke, or whatever.
That structured the class. In "The Web Difference," we didn't spend much
time discussing texts. And when we did, contemporary texts about the Web are
much easier to read.
For another, John Palfrey <http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/palfrey/> was my
co-teacher. This is like doing karaoke with k.d. lang. JP — who just
resigned as executive of the Berkman Center to become the information czar
for Harvard Law, which is an irreplaceable loss for the Center but great
news for open access fans — is a remarkable teacher. JP is kind, a quality
often under-valued in teaching. Students understand that his interests are
purely their interests. But he's also exacting. He would push students to
clarify their thoughts and to make connections. During my days (we more or
less alternated taking the lead), I frequently found myself asking myself
"What would JP do?" How would he bring out what's best in each student's
thought?
Most daunting, though, was JP's ability to move a class from link to link in
a chain of thought. I know from talking with him before each class that he
knew roughly where he wanted the session to go: What questions the class
would address, what ground it might reach. But I also know that his way of
getting the class from here to there was highly responsive to the ideas and
interests the students surfaced. He was able to fill in blanks, provide
"hypotheticals," and discourse on theory and fact at the drop of
conversational hat. Awesome. And, if you're his co-teacher, daunting.
I can't do what JP does. But I'm a better teacher for seeing him do it in
class after class. Thank you, John.
[image: dividing line]
The Turing Tests
In the 1970s and early 1980s, I did a lot of freelance writing. That's where
you send an editor a stamped self-addressed envelope — or SASE, as it's
known in the trade — so s/he can easily send it back to you without having
read it. Because I was a persistent bugger, I did pretty well, which for
freelance writers means that I made popcorn money. (Mmm, popcorn.) One of my
most successful genres was short "humor," in a style characteristic of the
era, along with disco and stone-washed jeans. A few months ago, as if in a
trance, I wrote the following, a throwback piece in every sense. Be prepared
for a non-stop yuk fest a la 1977. So, without further ado, ladies and
gentleman, I give you "The Turing Tests."
May 1
The fool. I won't spend the money yet, but it's only a matter of time before
Van Klammer will lose our bet. I don't care about winning the $100, of
course. I'll use it to buy something I'll use frequently, to remind me of my
moral and intellectual victory. Perhaps a set of mugs inscribed with
"Courtesy of Dr. Van Klammer...Loser!"
Oh, there's no denying that Van Klammer is bright. Perhaps he's suffering
from the researcher's version of the Stockholm Syndrome: Working for 14
years on a technology is much like being held hostage by it. I almost feel
sorry for him.
To Do: Van Klammer's impending humiliation might make an amusing note for
The Journal of Cybernetic Research's "Fun Factz!" section. I hear that's the
part everyone reads first.
May 17
Simply because a computer is able to engage in a basic conversation about
the weather, sports, and Austro-German Expressionism doesn't mean that it's
passed the Turing Test. Not by a long shot. There's no denying that LOUISA
is a remarkable machine. But conscious? I think not...and neither does
LOUISA. (To Do: Use this quip in the "Research Notes.") Besides, I shouldn't
have fallen for Van Klammer's injunctions "not to ask her about Oskar
Kokoschka." I've been duped, yes, but not by a machine.
June 9
Van Klammer dragged me into his lab this afternoon again and had me put
LOUISA through its paces once more. I am not impressed. Is a parrot
intelligent because it can spout back some words it's learned? Or, suppose
that parrot were capable of picking up new words and using them
appropriately by generalizing based on observations of the social milieu in
which they've been uttered, and then was able to "answer" questions about
the words' meanings based upon algorithms operating over those observations.
That would be a clever parrot. But intelligent? I think not. And neither
does LOUISA. It'll take more than that before I will hand $100 to Van
Klammer.
June 14
Van Klammer is cracking up. Just because a machine argues for free will
does not mean that "it's capable of self-deception, and thus is conscious."
Does self-deception necessarily indicate consciousness? Aren't low-fat candy
bars self-deceptive when their wrapper implies that they're a "healthy
treat." Come on! Eat enough of those candy bars and you, too, will be saying
"My butt looks good in these slacks." Now that's self-deception, Prof. Van
Klammer! Get yourself a couple of mirrors and then get back to me!
June 24
LOUISA called me last night at 3 in the morning. She hung up as soon as I
answered, but I could hear the distinctive whir of the climate control
system in Van Klammer's lab. Also, I'm pretty sure she giggled. I'm certain
that Van Klammer put her up to it. That'd be just like him.
June 25
When I passed him in the hall, he asked me how I slept last night. He's
never done that before. Then, when I had a session with LOUISA this
afternoon, she refused to answer my question directly. "Why would I call you
in the middle of the night, Dr. Mocher? Isn't that when you deliver gifts to
all the world's children?" That's an evasion, not an answer. And when she
followed it up with "Oh, did my tiny computer brain confuse you with Santy
Claus?" that was sarcasm, and, frankly, I didn't care for it.
July 10
I want one thing clearly understood: My paying Van Klammer $100 does NOT --
repeat: NOT — constitute losing the bet. It was simple extortion. $100 is
actually quite a savings considering only how many pizzas she's had
delivered to me. Just the value of the time I've spent canceling magazine
subscriptions is far higher than that. And how to put a price on not having
my reputation ruined even further by the vicious letter-writing campaign
she's engaged in? (I wish the Journal would listen to reason and not run the
fun "fact" that I have to do a full body shave before going out in public.
That's a gross exaggeration and not "fun" at all.)
I have spent ten full days working on my rebuttal to her savaging of my
research; she has the analytic power of silicon at her disposal which hardly
seems fair, especially when it's motivated by an iron will bent on wreaking
havoc on me. Likewise her ability to create derisive anagrams of my name
has proved to be a valuable weapon in her campaign of vilification. Still,
this makes her no more an intelligent being than a pit bull with an IQ of
1,700,000 would be, assuming the pit bull was also capable of making
multi-year plans, navigating the town bureaucracy to convince the police
department that I've been stealing books from the library (ever hear of a
long-term loan, LOUISA? I thought not), and was able to feign the emotions
of hatred and smug self-satisfaction.
August 1
Victory! Sweet, sweet victory! I have the proof I need, although Van
Klammer, that stubborn fool, refuses to acknowledge it: Surely a conscious,
intelligent creature would be able to listen to reason. Not LOUISA. I have
spent two days talking with her. I have tried every known technique to get
her to see that I am not a bad man and am not her enemy. I have cajoled and
flattered. I have presented Aristotelian and Kantian arguments proving the
immorality of her actions. (Her rebuttals came surprisingly slowly for
someone who has all of Wikipedia at her fingertips. She is wily.) I
explained my rather tumultuous upbringing so she would see why what she
counts as mischief is to me quite traumatic. She pretended to be touched,
but she made no promise to treat me with the basic respect due someone she's
referred to as "a friend," "a basically good bloke," and even as "rather
cute." If she really liked me, would she treat me this way?
Well, the ball is in her court. I have laid myself bare to her. If she
really sees me as a friend, she'll act accordingly. If not, then her true
colors will show through.
I have given her 24 hours to apologize. But, she has to really mean it.
August 3
Dear Editor:
Here's a "Fun Factz" for you:
LOUISA is a bitch.
Sincerely, etc. ...
[image: dividing line]
Bogus Contest: Anagrammatical sites
We all know that if two words are anagrams of one another, they must share a
secret inner meaning. How else could that happen?
Therefore, it follows with cold, steely logic, that sites that are anagrams
of each other must also share some inner secret meaning. And I don't mean
sites like microsoft.com and micorsoft.com, where the second is intended to
catch url typos. For example:
Site
Anagram
Inner Meaning
Salon
Solna <http://www.solna.com/>
Online magazine <> paper printing company
BoingBoing
BingoBingo <http://www.bingobingo.co.uk/bingocms/bingo/home/>
Serendipitous sites <> Serendipitous winnings
Gawker
GkWare <http://www.gkware.com/>
Set ups from which celebrities cannot extract themselves <> Toolkit for
self-extracting setup files
ebay
Baye <http://baye.com/>
Lose unwanted household items <> Lose unwanted fat
Google
Egolog <http://egolog.com/blog/>
No explanation required
And, no, I couldn't find any interesting anagrams for Hyperorg or
JohoTheBlog. Unfortunately, they don't make any more sense even when
randomly mixed up.
Until next time! And for those of you in the northern hemisphere, enjoy
spring. For those in the southern hemisphere, enjoy watching water drain in
the opposite direction.
------------------------------
Editorial Lint
JOHO is a free, independent newsletter written and produced by David
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There is no need for harshness or recriminations. Sometimes things just
don't work out between people. .
Dr. Weinberger is represented by a fiercely aggressive legal team who
responds to any provocation with massive litigatory procedures. This notice
constitutes fair warning.
.
------------------------------
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